Heavy, Heavy Hangover

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Clint from Dallas.

Hey, Clint, welcome.

What’s going on?

Thanks.

Well, I have a question about a family tradition that is when somebody has a birthday. This is usually done with kids. The person giving the present puts a present on top of the other kid’s head or the birthday boy or girl and says a funny little phrase, heavy, heavy hang over thy poor head, what do you wish this donor? So once after this little funny phrase, and the present still sitting on top of the kid’s head, the birthday kid is supposed to wish the giver of the gift something. And it’s usually meant to be something amazing or spectacular. I don’t know, a unicorn, a bag of diamonds, your own airplane, something fanciful. Then it’s over. So then you hand the present to the kid and he tears through it and that’s it.

But I have no idea where this tradition came from.

And my mom thought my dad brought it from his growing up and my dad thought my mom brought it from her growing up. So they’re both denying where they got this thing from.

But I would like to know.

You guys know lots of stuff.

So any ideas?

Yes.

Yes, indeed.

But let’s hear the phrase one more time.

Heavy, heavy hangover. Thy poor head. What do you wish this donor?

Donor at the end. Is that D-O-N-O-R, do you think? Yes. I mean, like, you know, blood donor or that kind of donor. I think I Googled it, oh, I don’t know, a couple years ago, and I think somebody had a slightly different version. They were asking the same kind of question, but nobody seemed to have any answers. You know, we often cross over into folklore territory on the show, and this is one of those times. This started as a kissing game in the 1850s.

Okay.

So the way that it worked as a kissing game, there were a lot of variations, and as all folklore and kind of children’s games go, it’s changed and modified over the years and come down to us by many different paths.

But in general, what would happen would be a group of kids, say teen or preteen. There’d be a leader, and there’d be a judge, and there’d be a person who was it out of all the kids. And everyone would put something personal in a hat, say a bit of jewelry or a pin that they were wearing or something like that.

And the person who is it sits down. The leader holds the hat over their head and draws something from the hat. And then the leader says to the judge, heavy, heavy, what hangs over you? And the judge says either fine or super fine. If it’s fine, it belongs to a boy or a man. If it’s super fine, it belongs to a girl or a woman.

And then whoever it has to do, it’s what’s called a forfeit. Do you know this word, a forfeit? It’s when you have to pay a penalty. One of them is to go to Rome, which if it’s a boy, he’ll have to kiss every girl in the room. Another one, which I love this expression, measure yards of tape and cut it off. They’ll have to kiss each other with arms extended. And there’s a whole bunch more of these.

So there’s complicated versions of this. They get even more in-depth. In any case, so there’s a lot of different versions of this kissing game. Over the years, this has come down to us as the present version, which you’re talking about, where people hold a present over a head, and people either have to guess what’s in it, or they have to make a wish for somebody in the room. Some people say, what are you going to do with the bump on your head instead of what do you wish on this present?

And I think where the, what do you wish this donor that you say comes from an older version of this saying, which is heavy, heavy, what hangs over and what shall be down to the owner, which is also sometimes what shall be done to the owner. So it sounds like what do you wish this donor is just a verbal corruption or transformation of what shall be down to the owner or what shall be done to the owner.

It’s definitely not just your family. In fact, you can go on YouTube and watch other families doing it, and it’s kind of funny because some of the parents are having to encourage the kids to not bypass the good wishes for the donor because they want to go straight to the presents.

That is really neat.

There’s a ton of history, obviously. Obviously, this was all before television, before radio, before, of course, the Internet. I can understand why games might be complicated. Family and folks got together on a special occasion. They were going to be there for a while. Let’s play some games. That’s great. I love that.

Thanks, Clint. We really appreciate it. Let us know if you come up with any more of these family stories or family traditions. We love hearing about them.

I sure will.

Thanks, Clint.

Bye-bye.

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